Mystery Hotdog

Quick Overview:

We have a long tradition of Chef Andy’s amazing games based on his unique recipes. But we are in a time of transition at SHINE!, and Chef Andy is handing off the reigns to the up and coming Chef Jezzzy. So we did a combined game with both of them.

The basic idea was both chef’s picked out their favorite hot dog toppings from the super market and we printed them on index cards and put them on a giant dart board. Students then volunteered to throw darts at this board, we flipped the index cards to reveal the secret ingredients, and then we made them a Sunday morning breakfast.

Supplies You’ll Need:

1. Darts and Dart Board. We have a large group in a large room, so a normal dartboard would have been too small, but it might be just right for your context. We created something bigger.

2. Index Cards. We put our chef’s faces on one side (the side facing the crowd), and their secret ingredient on the opposite side.

4. Hot Dogs. We used hot dogs as our base for this game because it was Memorial Day, but you can use anything: tacos, pizza, wraps, ice cream, cereal, whatever you want. Any meal can be transformed into a Chef Andy/Jezzzy recipe.

Prep:

There is a decent amount of prep to this game: buying ingredients, printing index cards, sticking them to the dart board, cooking hot dogs. Being a chef is hard work. And don’t forget about the garbage cans. Have lots of garbage cans.

Game Play:

We typically don’t keep score for these kinds of games, they’re more for entertainment value and stories to tell their parents when they ask “what did you learn at church today?” We also don’t randomly pick students for this game – anything involving eating food we only want volunteers who know what they’re getting into.

Once we’ve chosen our volunteers, we let them take turns throwing darts at the board. Among the ingredients, we also include “wild cards” which means the chef gets to choose. That way if there’s a real gross ingredient that never gets hit the chef can still choose it. It’s also fun to make small group leaders eat what their kids throw darts at, it’s a great way to create a memory with small group leaders and students.

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